A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world
DistroWatch Weekly
DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 286, 19 January 2009
Welcome to this year's third issue of DistroWatch Weekly! In this issue we take a look at Arch Linux, the minimal Linux distribution that packs a big punch. In the news section, openSUSE puts out a call for build developers and opens their feature tracker to the community, Fedora updates its artwork guidelines for Fedora 11 'Leonidas', Gentopia closes its doors, and Android Fanatic releases a Debian installer for Google's mobile device. Also in this issue, Ubuntu comments on the reasons behind the unavailability of restricted software in the distribution, while Singapore airlines rolls out Red Hat Linux to every one of its seats. Finally, we include a link to an article comparing three of the most popular mini distributions - Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux and TinyMe. Happy reading!
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Feature Story
Arch Linux in review
Introduction
When writing a review, I always try and view the distribution in the light of what it is expected to do - as claimed by the creators. Each Linux distribution is unique and they all have different goals. Some try to do and be everything, while others are very niche. Some want to include binary drivers and proprietary codecs by default, while others go out of their way to make a stand against such things. It makes sense that you cannot judge them all by the same criteria. For this reason I tend to look harder at distributions which advertise their ability to do everything out of the box, because that's a big call. Users are the same. Some want a distribution to do everything for them, to include every binary driver and be able to play anything they can throw at it. Others are happy to create, tweak and configure the system themselves. This diversity is a great thing, because it helps to build our community and push it forward.
If I could express the perfect everyday Linux distribution for me, it would be something with the ease and stability of Debian with the power and flexibility of Gentoo, combined with the convenience of binaries and the latest packages and technology. There's no doubt that Debian is a very stable distribution and its binary package management is probably the best around, but the packages in stable are just too old for a flashy new desktop. While most distributions let you re-compile packages as you see fit, Gentoo is a completely source based distribution. This means that you compile all the programs yourself with the help of their package manager, Portage. Compiling everything from source means Gentoo is extremely flexible as you can customise each and every package yourself. Yes, this includes architectural optimisations, but more importantly it means dependencies. If you don't want support for some hardware (Bluetooth for example) or particular libraries (such as GTK+ or Qt) then you can tell your system to never include these if they are optional. The result is a very fast, completely customised system, but due to the required compile time it does take a rather long time to get there. A Linux distribution which is extremely minimal, but lets the user build on top of that base would be perfect, for me. I do not want a Linux distribution to do everything for me out of the box, I want to control my system and set things up myself. If only such a distribution existed!
Enter Arch Linux. According to the project's website, Arch Linux (pronounced "ahrch", as in "archer") is an independently developed "lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple... Development is focused on a balance of simplicity, elegance, code-correctness and bleeding edge software... Its lightweight and simple design makes it easy to extend and mold into whatever kind of system you're building." The distro currently offers packages for i686 and x86_64 architectures - yes, i686, which means Arch Linux will not run on older i386, i486 and i586 hardware. Although most systems in use these days would be compatible, it means that your processor needs to be an Intel Pentium Pro, AMD Athlon, VIA C3 or above. Their official repositories (called "core" and "extra") are smaller than many other major distributions, but they have a very active community which creates additional packages (released in the "community" repository). There is also a "testing" repository for upcoming releases. Arch Linux has a rolling-release package model meaning there are no distinctly separate versions, just snapshots in time of the package trees. This means that the security and feature updates of packages, as well as new major versions, are all included in the same tree. A single install of Arch Linux can be forever updated in the same "version" without doing an "upgrade" as with many other distributions.
Is Arch Linux for you? Well, this particular distribution is targeted at "competent GNU/Linux users," or at least those willing to learn. If you're looking to give Arch Linux a shot, be prepared to do lots of reading and trawling through the forums and Wiki. Arch Linux doesn't automatically set things up for you - you have to do it yourself - so start learning how to be patient as things may not work the way you expect them to! There is an official install guide and beginners guide which will help get you started. In my short time of using Arch Linux (about 2 months) I have found the community very friendly and helpful.
Installation
The default installation provides a base "no frills" install only. This means your system should boot directly to a terminal login. No X Window and no GUI. From here you can install the software you want. To get this base system, Arch Linux provides two different installation media images; one for USB memory sticks and the usual ISO for a CD. There are then only two types of installation methods available; either the core install (which includes all the base packages needed to get the minimal system on the CD) or via FTP. As Arch Linux is a "rolling release" system, the FTP method makes sense as you will download the latest packages as you install. Apart from this, there is no difference in the resulting system when installing via the two methods. I chose to perform an FTP install.
There is no question that the installer for Arch Linux is very basic. The install environment does indeed support Logical Volume Management (LVM) and software RAID devices; however, the installer has no ability to configure these and must be done on another console first. Likewise, other options, such as tweaking your file systems (i.e. setting the journal mode and labels, etc) must be done manually. The installer itself is an ncurses-based Bash script and automates the six main functions to perform a complete install. This process consists of setting up the network (if required), configuring your hard drives, setting up a mirror to download packages and refreshing the package database (if using the FTP install method), selecting and installing the base packages, configuring the system and finally, installing the bootloader (GRUB or LILO).
The script provides the option to manually configure your partitions, or it can do it for you. While many distributions create only one partition for the whole of root, the default scheme here includes separate partitions for root, /boot and /home. This is good to see! The installer also recommends allowing a script to automatically detect and configure your hardware, but you can specify all these yourself if you prefer. It will also ask what support you require in your initramfs (initial RAM disk - the mini environment loaded by the boot loader which prepares your system), such as booting from LVM and software RAID devices, or even NFS shares and USB devices. While many Linux distributions include everything in an initramfs to accommodate all users, with Arch Linux you can easily customise it to specifically suit your system. This shows the power and flexibility of this distribution.
Next, you must manually edit the configuration files for your system. While these will have been automatically populated, the installer gives you the option to tweak the system and set other important information, such as the hostname. One of the things I really like about Arch Linux is that all the main system configuration is kept in one simple file, /etc/rc.conf. Here you tell the system what modules to load, what services to start, what locale and keymap to use, set the time zone, clock and the system hostname, configure networking and more. The file is well commented and easy to understand. Now that really is keeping it simple! By default Arch Linux only automatically starts the base services for you, such as the logger, networking and cron. The rest is left up to you. Any other services that are installed must be added to the 'DAEMONS' list in rc.conf for them to automatically start on boot. You can also tell services to start in the background by adding an at sign to the name (i.e. @network) or disable a service with an exclamation mark (i.e. !network). The order in which services are executed relates to their position in this list (excluding any dependencies). I like this way of doing things. When it comes to installing the bootloader, the installer will automatically add the entries to boot Arch Linux. However, if you have other distributions you will need to add these manually. That's it! Time to boot into the new Arch Linux system.
Arch Linux uses a BSD-style boot system which consists of three boot levels; init, multi (or single if booting to single mode) and local. It does not use the "symlinks and numbers" method of SysV to manage services (as is widely used by most Linux distributions), but rather loads rules specified in the /etc/rc.d/functions file. This init system is very easy to understand and manage. Upon a successful initial boot of the system you should arrive at a standard terminal logon. Under VirtualBox, this system took 9 seconds to boot and used just over 10 MB of memory. Pretty neat. Most desktop users will want X Window and a graphical interface, as well as the ability to remotely connect to the box, but first there are other things to configure. I installed an OpenSSH server, but, by default, Arch Linux does not allow connections to the machine from other boxes on the network. I had to edit the /etc/hosts.allow file and add a rule for SSH, which I did with sshd: ALL. This then allowed outside connections into my SSH service.
Because I was logging in as root, I wanted to create my own user. I did this by running the adduser command. Next I installed the sudo package so that my user could run commands as root. This was as simple as editing the /etc/sudoers file to allow all users in the wheel group to run all commands. Then I added my user to the wheel group with gpasswd -a chris wheel and logged out of the root account. Now I was able to log in as my user and perform root commands via sudo. By default, my account was only a member of the "users" group, so as I added more functionality to Arch Linux I also had to add my user to the respective groups. For example, to play sounds, a user needs to be a member of the "audio" group and to use 3D it must be in the "video" group.
Because Arch Linux is not a fork of any other distribution (although founder Judd Vinet did take inspiration from CRUX), they have their own independently developed package management system called Pacman. It is a lightweight, simple, yet powerful package manager. It allows you to perform the usual commands to install, remove and manage packages, but also has the ability to use both official and custom compiled packages. This is part of the ports-style ABS (Arch Build System) and is a powerful feature which lets you create an even more customised system to suit your needs. Not only can you easily re-compile any official package, but also any of the community packages available in AUR (Arch User-community Repository). The ABS method also makes it very easy to build your own packages by creating a simple build script and then managing it like any other package as part of the wider Linux system. This provides the perfect mix between binary and source. While you can manually build these packages from source, there are a few tools (similar to Gentoo's Portage) that make it easier. One such package is called Yaourt (Yet AnOther User Repository Tool). To see how all this works under Arch Linux, I decided to build this package and try it. First of all, I installed the required build tools and 'lftp' (which I decided to use to download the source files).
chris@josiah $ sudo pacman -S base-devel lftp
Next I had to grab the various source files required to build Yaourt. These include the PKGBUILD script (which automates the compilation process) and other files such as a post-install script.
chris@josiah $ lftp -c http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/yaourt/yaourt
chris@josiah $ cd yaourt
Now, I had to build the package. Adding the -s option tells the build tool to automatically pull in any required dependencies using Pacman.
chris@josiah $ makepkg -s
==> Making package: yaourt 0.9.2.3-1 x86_64 (Wed Jan 7 17:45:36 EST 2009)
==> Checking Runtime Dependencies...
==> Checking Buildtime Dependencies...
==> Retrieving Sources...
-> Downloading yaourt-0.9.2.3.src.tar.gz...
--2009-01-07 17:45:37-- http://archiwain.free.fr/os/i686/yaourt/yaourt-0.9.2.3.src.tar.gz
Length: 65906 (64K) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: `yaourt-0.9.2.3.src.tar.gz.part'
100%[==============================>] 65,906 36.3K/s in 1.8s
Once the package was built successfully, I just had to install it with Pacman.
chris@josiah $ sudo pacman -U yaourt-0.9.2.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
Now I was able to use the "yaourt" command just like Pacman, except that installing a package this way automates the entire build and installation process for source packages. Pretty awesome.
Being used to other package managers such as emerge, zypper and apt-get, it took me a while to get my head around the syntax used with Pacman. This wasn't because it was hard, just different! After looking up the DistroWatch package management cheat sheet from a few months ago I was ready to sink my teeth into Pacman. Updating the repositories was easy, I just ran pacman -Sy which pulled down the "extra" and "community" repositories as specified in my /etc/pacman.conf file. Next I had to get my favourite text editor, Vim. Searching for Vim took a total of 0.44 seconds, which was pretty fast. Installing Vim revealed 15 required dependencies totalling 163 MB in size once installed, including Python, Ruby, GPM and some other libraries. This is where you could take advantage of the ABS and re-build the package. If you do not want Vim to have support for X, Python or indeed a console mouse with GPM, then you could re-build it without these options.
Nevertheless, installing Vim and its 15 dependencies from the repository took only 4.9 seconds using the command pacman -S --noconfirm vim. Removing Vim and all its dependencies via the command pacman -Rs --noconfirm vim took 0.51 seconds. Because Arch Linux is minimal, it does not install every dependency under the sun for each package, but only those required for the package to function (well, really whatever the developer decided to include support for). Because of this, another neat thing that Pacman does is suggest additional packages which would enable more features. For example, when installing Python, Pacman prints to the screen "Optional dependencies for python, tk: for IDLE, pynche and modulator". If you want support for any of these, simply install Tk. Once again this shows the power and flexibility of Arch Linux. While this is certainly very handy, I think this information should be given as a summary upon completion of an install rather than after each dependency. These messages can be easily missed when installing dozens of packages.
Graphical environments
After installing the base Arch Linux on my trusty Dell Latitude X1 laptop (Intel Pentium M 1.10 GHz, 1.2 GB RAM, Intel 915 Video, 60 GB hard drive), I now had to get X Window and sound working, as well as some sort of graphical interface. The new X.Org sports fancy hotplugging features so HAL and D-Bus were required. First I installed these, added "hal" to the DAEMONS list in rc.conf and started the service. Then, following instructions from the Wiki, I ran the following command:
chris@josiah $ pacman -S libgl xorg xf86-input-evdev xf86-input-synaptics xf86-video-intel mesa
This provided me with a basic X Window environment and specific support for my video card and touchpad. Now I was able to test it, which I did with the startx command. X started up and I was greeted with the usual tab window manager (TWM) and some xterms. Running glxgears I noted that 3D was working correctly. So far so good! Unfortunately my touchpad didn't work properly when using hotplug mode, so to get this working correctly I had to create an xorg.conf file (with sudo X -configure) and then edit this appropriately. This is where new users will potentially fall down - when something doesn't work as expected, you have to configure it yourself. But then that's the audience that Arch Linux is directed at, those willing to tinker with their system and learn.
Next, I needed a graphical window manager, for which I usually use wmii. Installation was effortless, as expected. By default Arch Linux does not install a desktop login manager such as GDM or KDM (of course, it's up to the user!) so I instead opted to just run wmii from the terminal using xinit. After installation, all I had to do was edit my ~/.xinitrc file and set exec wmii in it. Now, running xinit resulted in X starting, followed by my desktop. I did notice an issue, however, when using wmii. Redraw was extremely slow and switching between tiles caused X.Org to chew up around 90% CPU. By using the 'vesa' driver for X instead of 'intel' this seemed to improve. I assumed this might have something to do with the new Intel driver using GEM (Graphics Execution Manager) instead of TTM (Translation Table Maps), which is only available in the 2.6.28 version of the Linux kernel. At the time of my install, Arch Linux still booted a 2.6.27 kernel, so I installed the 2.6.28 kernel from testing. Unfortunately the result was the same. I tested the same packages on a system with an NVIDIA graphics card and also under VirtualBox, where neither system had this issue. I posted the issue on the forums and after a suggestion to build the latest Intel driver and X.Org server the problem went away. In fact, it was noticeably faster and only used 3% CPU. It seems to me that a driver which has this sort of problem should not have found its way into the stable tree until the other required packages were also updated.
Arch Linux offers many other lightweight window managers, but for the majority of users out there who prefer a desktop manager, there are also plenty to choose from, including GNOME 2.24.2, KDE 4.1.3 and Xfce 4.4.3 (all the latest releases at the time of writing). All of these environments are available by simply installing either the "gnome", "kde" or "xfce4" meta-package (called a group). The KDE install appears to be reasonably complete, while the GNOME group is more minimalistic, providing a reasonable base GNOME environment but by no means complete. To extend the GNOME desktop, the group 'gnome-extra' can be installed which adds further 109 packages. Of course, this is not the only way to get such a system. The ability to install a more minimal desktop environment is available by installing specific KDE and GNOME packages. Naturally, the base can then be built up further by adding other packages. Unlike most other distributions, Arch Linux does not brand packages by default and appears to leave them in their default vanilla state without performing additional "tweaks". As a result, the default desktops are rather "normal" (as the screenshots will show), but Arch Linux artwork can easily be installed from the repositories.
Because of its minimalistic nature, there are many other aspects of your system that you will need to manually install and configure. This includes things like CPU speedstepping, suspend and resume, scanners, printers, cameras, and many more. Naturally this is not the place to cover these, but rest assured the support for them exists, you just have to install the required packages and, at times, modify the configuration. This is where the Wiki and community support are invaluable, especially when coming from a distribution which configures all these things out of the box.
Finally, Arch Linux does provide users with the ability to play proprietary media formats and also includes Flash support. These can be achieved by installing "flashplugin", "codecs" and "libdvdcss".
Conclusion
The "keep it simple" philosophy of Arch Linux really shines through in all aspects of this distribution. It lets the user control the system and doesn't do anything unless told to. It has the speed and convenience of binary with the power of source and is very flexible when it comes to optional dependencies. Being a rolling release, the packages are also reasonably up-to-date. Other than the problem with the Intel video driver, I have not had any issues with the quality of the packages. Still, I have to wonder how well a smaller distribution like this can provide overall stability. Perhaps time will tell. It also remains to be seen how well Pacman will perform after installing and removing thousands of packages. Certainly, Arch Linux isn't for everybody, no distribution is, but it sure is plenty of fun and you learn a lot. If you're the kind of person who likes to fiddle and tweak your system, then definitely give it a shot. Once you have your system up and running the way you want, it's very easy to maintain and it feels great. If you've been tempted to try it out, there is a Wiki page listing how it compares to others. As for my dream distribution, Arch Linux comes pretty darn close.
Arch Linux - KDE 4.1.3 Desktop (full image size: 218kB, screen resolution: 1024x768 pixels)
Miscellaneous News
openSUSE calls for build contributors, Fedora focuses on artwork, Debian runs on Android, Singapore Airlines switches to Red Hat, Ubuntu on restricted software, mini distros, Gentopia
The recent release of openSUSE 11.1 was built entirely using Novell's Online Build Service (OBS). In issue 54 of openSUSE's weekly newsletter, the project put out a call for new build contributors. "The OBS developers have collected smaller projects on this Wiki page. These projects are ideal for anyone new to OBS development," writes Adrian Schröter who confirms that "we're happy to mentor new developers and contributors." In other openSUSE news, Joe Brockmeier announced the availability of the project's feature tracker to the wider community. Called "OpenFATE", the online system will allow anyone to "view and discuss features, so long as they have an account. This will allow the openSUSE community to see how the releases evolve and participate directly in feature discussions."
* * * * *
Now that the name of the next Fedora release has been decided upon, the project had turned their focus towards artwork. The project's Wiki has a page dedicated to the process. "Fedora 11's artwork process is going to work a little differently than our artwork process has worked in the past. Rather than having multiple theme concepts competing with one another and dividing artists' time and energies, we're going to try having one theme concept (inspired by the release code name) that everyone works together on. We're hoping to produce higher-quality artwork in a more timely manner this way." The new name must be linked somehow to the name of the previous release but is then open to interpretation. The new name 'Leonidas' is a ship in the British Royal Navy, as was Cambridge, but we may see artwork depicting 300 Spartans rather than nautical items.
* * * * *
Harnessing the power of the Debian Arm port, an unofficial installer for the Android phone has been released. Taking just 10 minutes to install, the process "leaves you with access to the full plethora of programs available in Debian and let's you continue using your phone as it was intended to be: as an Android device with all the capabilities thereof." The installer requires a modified version of the phone's firmware, an updated version of BusyBox and a FAT32 formatted SD card to run.
* * * * *
With the world experiencing an economic slowdown, Singapore Airlines has arranged the roll-out of Red Hat Linux to run the in-flight entertainment systems on their Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 aircrafts. "Singapore Airlines' latest investments in cabin service are designed to help it stand out from the competition and attract more passengers." The new version of KrisWorld will not only offer more movies and audio, but also turns each seat into a PC, complete with StarOffice and an accessible USB port. "The system consists of a central Linux server that connects to a network of PCs installed in every seat on the aircraft. The KrisWorld software offers an improved user interface and each economy-class seat is fitted with a 10.6-inch LCD screen that offers resolution of 1,280 pixels by 768 pixels." For those fortunate enough, the screens are larger in business and first class, where each seat comes with a 15.4-inch and 23-inch screen, respectively."
* * * * *
In a post to the project's "sounder" mailing list, Ubuntu developer Colin Watson explains why the distribution cannot include certain packages to provide support for all proprietary codecs and drivers. "There are certainly packages that we believe that we can distribute over the Internet but not ship on physical media," he writes. Some packages have a license which prohibits re-distribution by Canonical, but does not prohibit the end user from installing the software. "It's quite possible that distributing GPL-incompatible GStreamer plugins *by default* would violate the licence on GPLed GStreamer applications, because setting all that up by default goes a bit further than 'mere aggregation' and starts to look rather more like a derived work; but letting the user put it together after the fact is different." He also asserts that there are active patents against MP3 decoders which restrict Ubuntu's ability to include a codec out of the box.
* * * * *
Since its inception, the Gentopia project has brought many new unofficial features to the Gentoo Linux distribution. But developer Doug Goldstein reports that the Gentopia overlay will now merge into that of freedesktop. "Recently we've seen a freedesktop herd rise up in Gentoo which is a collaboration between the various desktop environment herds which is a good thing for users,", he writes. "From the get go I have wanted this herd to take over the Gentopia herd and project and fold it into its wing since it includes many freedesktop.org projects, the time has finally come for this to happen. As a result, the Gentopia overlay, web page and e-mail alias are going away and being replaced by the freedesktop herd's resources."
* * * * *
Ever wondered whether a mini distribution such as Damn Small Linux, TinyMe or Puppy Linux would be worth trying? The ZDNet Community site has published an article by Jamie Watson comparing these three 'big' players. He tests each of them and discusses the problems he encountered and what he liked about each system. "The first time I tried Damn Small Linux, I didn't care much for it," he writes. But once I got over a couple of problems, the more I tried it, the more I found that I liked it. It really is very, very good at what it sets out to do, and they have done an excellent job of staying focused on that while continuing development." Watson says that "Puppy Linux strikes a very good balance between small size and excellent functionality", while "TinyMe did the best job of starting up the desktop with a minimum of fuss. It didn't complain or get confused by the ATI display adapter."
Alexey Rusakov has announced the availability of an updated release of ALT Linux "Desktop" edition, version 4.1.1: "ALT Linux proudly presents a new release of our desktop distribution, ALT Linux 4.1.1 Desktop. This is a general-purpose GNU/Linux distribution intended for use on desktop systems, laptops and netbooks. Changes since ALT Linux 4.1.0 Desktop include: updated version of OpenOffice.org - 3.0.0, with bug fixes; Compiz works out-of-the-box, all you need to do is run it from the menu; fixes in NetworkManager, targeted on its stability and PPPoE operation; printer settings and management is fixed in a default KDE installation; CPU frequency changing fixed; miscellaneous fixes here and there; an installation DVD image with English as the default language." Here is the brief release announcement.
Volker Theile has announced the release of FreeNAS 0.69, a tiny FreeBSD-based operating system which provides free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services: "After a long time of development FreeNAS 0.69 "Kwisatz Haderach" (revision 4276) has been released. Majors changes: add TFTP service, it is accessible via 'Services, TFTP' in the WebGUI; add Samba patch; upgrade nano to 2.0.9; upgrade PHP to 5.2.8; add WOL support for miscellaneous NICs; upgrade nfe driver; fixed Samba lock file problem; replace FTP server Pure-FTPd with ProFTPD 1.3.2rc3; add TCP wrappers, the rules can be configured via WebGUI 'Network, Hosts'; upgrade ATAidle to 2.4, Transmission to 1.42, rsync to 3.0.5; add ability to create a SWAP partition during installation; enhance the 'System, Advanced, Swap' page to select a file or disk device as swap space." Read the complete release announcement for a detailed list of changes and new features.
Philip Newborough has announced the release of CrunchBang Linux 8.10.02, an Ubuntu-based distribution featuring the lightweight Openbox window manager: "The final 8.10.02 builds of CrunchBang Linux, CrunchBang Linux 'Lite' and CrunchEee are now available. The new releases contain numerous changes and many fixes provided by the CrunchBang community. Features: PCMan File Manager replaces Thunar; Xfce integration and dependencies removed in favour of LXDE components; VLC returns to replace Totem as the default media player; Qt4 application (VLC and Skype) are now styled with QGtkStyle, providing a unified look-and-feel to the desktop; a new Tango icon theme for Claws Mail; Leafpad included as an alternative editor to gedit; Gdebi installed by default; gPodder podcast catcher installed and included in the 'Internet' menu...." See the release announcement and release notes for further details.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
PureOS. PureOS and PureOSlight are GNU/Linux live CDs based on Debian's testing repository. These are desktop distributions that can be used as live media (CD or USB) or as full-featured operating systems installed on a hard disk. PureOS is a 700 MB live CD with KDE, Iceweasel, Icedove, OpenOffice.org, Songbird, VLC and K3B. PureOSlight is a small 300 MB live CD with Xfce, Iceweasel, Icedove, AbiWord, Gnumeric and Exaile.
PureOS 1.1 - a desktop live CD based on Debian's testing branch. (full image size: 765kB, screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels)
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New distributions added to waiting list
Amahi. Amahi is a home server distribution designed to efficiently manage the networking and backup of all the computers, game consoles and other devices in a network, and securely access the network from the Internet. It is based on Fedora.
Galinux. Galinux is an Ubuntu-based distribution with full support for Galician, a language spoken in one of Spain's autonomous communities.
Icadyptes. Icadyptes is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux. Currently in early development.
SOAD Linux. SOAD (SUSE On Active Diet) Linux is an openSUSE-based minimalist distribution featuring the Enlightenment 17 window manager.
1 • Arch Linux (by vaithy on 2009-01-19 09:19:07 GMT from India)
WoW!! there are two types of Linux users...Who want the 'Hard way' (call them 'Geek") and others the 'easy way'(wanna be 'noob') I certainly belong to second category.. never want to work with 'termi(nator)nal'...afraid of touching 'gentoo or arch'.. But, U simply bowled me.. I'll try 'arch way'..in a week.. Thanks U
vaithy 2 • Giving Arch a try (by Muhammad Fahd Waseem on 2009-01-19 09:35:58 GMT from Germany)
I've never been one for terminal/console centric distros, but this review has convinced me to at least try. And if the first comment is any indication, Arch is going to see a few extra downloads this week! 3 • Error in introduction (by Rohan Dhruva on 2009-01-19 09:45:32 GMT from India)
Hi,
Nice issue, and nice roundup of news. There is, however, one error in the introduction- it is mentioned that "and Debian releases an installer for Google's Android." - however, it is not an official Debian project installer, it is an installer made by some other person.
Keep up the great work, Rohan 4 • Arch (by Pumpino on 2009-01-19 09:54:41 GMT from Australia)
"ease and stability of Debian with the power and flexibility of Gentoo". There's already a distro that fits this description. It's called Fedora! 5 • Archlinux... (by Anil Yilmaz on 2009-01-19 10:12:35 GMT from Turkey)
I found Arch after I distrohopped for more than 2 years and am using it on my home and work computers both for more than a year.. I say Arch rocks. It's true that there can be some glitches with some exotic hardware or sometimes you have to open a terminal to edit some configuration files, but, a great community and a wiki is there and you never find yourself in a helpless situation. With Arch, there is always a solution for your troubles. Also, with AUR you can find nearly all the packages that official repos lack, you can build your own packages easily and share with other people.
Arch reminds me the old days of computing, you were having fun just by learning about computers, PC gaming, Basic and Pascal programming etc. Arch really puts that fun back into computing.
A great review, thank you. 6 • arch is sweet... (by Mark on 2009-01-19 10:17:01 GMT from Japan)
... until they release broken packages that mess up the whole desktop. Happened to me a couple of years ago as I upgraded Gnome. Of course I tried to clean up the mess but it didn't work out so after few days of struggle I ended up switching to gentoo. Hopefully they improved the QA by now.. 7 • Arch (by Ariel on 2009-01-19 10:18:50 GMT from Slovakia)
I love using Archlinux, but dealing with *.pacnew files all the time it's quite tiring, there should be a easier way to handle newer configuration files. Good Weekly news, as always the best thing for Monday's morning. Regards 8 • Arch Linux - you can keep it (by Jose on 2009-01-19 10:25:37 GMT from United States)
From the June 04 2008 newsletter"
" Contributed by: Dusty Phillips Arch Is Not a Democracy
Every once in a while someone says that there should be a public vote on the way Arch Linux is run. A common response is "Arch is not a democracy" In a democratic society, the majority opinion rules. This is not the case in Arch. There has been a lot of majority opinion bouncing around in recent times that is not ever going into the Arch Linux core as defined by the developers.
Arch is really a "Cooperative Anarchy". Anyone is free to do anything they like with Arch Linux, excepting the few copyleft restrictions enforced by the GPL. This means that anyone who doesn't like the current direction the Arch Linux development team is taking the distro can start their own development team and run their version exactly the way they want to. Neither team would be "more official" or "more legitimate" than the other. Ideally, this would occur with a certain level of cooperation between the two (or multiple) teams, with no hard feelings, but this is not a requirement. Thus, everyone can be satisfied and no vote excluding some users' opinions is required.
The Arch development team itself is a "Voluntary Oligarchy". The Arch developers have chosen to develop this distro in a way that suits them. Nobody but the developers has input into what goes on in official Arch development. This is their linux distribution and they have been kind enough to share it with the rest of the world in case someone else likes it. The great thing for users, however, is that they get to choose whether or not they are governed by this group of people.
Users that don't like the way Arch Linux is developed have two simple choices:
1. Use a different Linux distribution or operating system. 2. Develop Arch into what they want it to be.
As I mentioned last month, the second option does not require forking Arch. You can create custom repositories of community contributed tools based on, but independent of the Arch Linux core. So next time you think your voice should be heard in a democratic fashion, remember that you are already your own personal Arch Overlord and are free to do with this distribution exactly what you wish. " 9 • Thanks for the review, and to #8 (by Eduardo Romero on 2009-01-19 10:33:27 GMT from Puerto Rico)
Well, a great review, that will be featured in the Arch Linux Newsletter for sure.
As for #8, Thanks for putting up that text, we really like for people to read that. You know there was a time where a lot of people were only demanding from us, and not contributing anything? After that article things have settled down, and no those people were not gone, they just started to research and contribute more so that their problems get fixed.
If you are going to try a do-it-yourself distro, be aware that you should do more research, we don't go hand holding the users. And our users loves us for that. Hence the current lot of positive reviews for Arch, I will feature them all in the February edition of the Arch Newsletter, for all of you to see.
Thanks,
Eduardo "kensai" Romero 10 • Arch Linux (by Dr.Saleem Khan on 2009-01-19 10:41:52 GMT from Pakistan)
When people talk of Arch Linux and its good things I tend to agree with them in many if not most of the aspects of Arch Linux . It is one of the remarkable distribution which is second best to Debian GNU/Linux imho.
But the question that bugs me when we talk of Arch Linux is that are we providing Linux to "Linux Gurus" only ? Everything about Arch Linux is amazing except the installation part which Arch Linux development team stubbornly wants to be done "the Arch way" due to various technical reason. They also call this concept KISS.
But how do they or anybody e.g Slackware Linux team expect that a common man, a home user, an office user will learn all these hard ways to install something which is a real better alternate to Window$ when you tell them so many good things about Linux and offer it as a working alternate to Window$?
OK , I know we can offer them PCLinuxOS or other so called "user friendly" "beginner`s" distributions but to me that is like telling them to use Window$ 95 than Window$ XP as they are not yet "Linux Experts". I personally feel that this is to keep those users deprived of something which is really good just because you ( the development teams ) don`t want it to be for everyone because you don`t want to quit/modify what you make according to those people needs.
I have used Faunos, Chakra, godane`s ArchLive and others and I find Arch Linux simply amazing but not the native Arch Linux just because of its installation .
Linux in my opinion should be for all according to their level of understanding and benefits and not just a fun alternate OS. I know many will not agree to me but this is how I take it , I quote Debian as an example, before Etch I could just dream of installing it but now I am posting this from Lenny Live CD I made with latest Remastersys by Tony, I installed Debian Lenny from daily build iso last night and made this remastered CD.
Give home users an easy home computing life with linux than to expect them to go to Linux learning schools to learn all what you know and then expect that they will use Arch Linux or Gentoo or Slackware.
Regards, 11 • CrunchBang (by elimisteve at 2009-01-19 10:43:46 GMT from United States)
CrunchBang sounds like a great way to make *buntu more light-weight. Is there any reason to prefer it over Xubuntu? 12 • Arch and Sidux are my fav (by wegface on 2009-01-19 10:52:30 GMT from United Kingdom)
Always liked Arch, found it to be very fast, perhaps as fast as sidux - its configuration file is a gem and should be in all distros imo. Pacman is brill, community is excellent, all in all Arch Linux is a "proper bo" stand alone distro, i cannot fault it. Peace 13 • Arch-Linux made easy (by Michael on 2009-01-19 11:13:50 GMT from Germany)
Anybody who thinks that Arch ist too difficult to install should try Chakra-Live-CD (http://chakra-project.org/download-iso.html). They are still in alpha-stage but it looks very promising so far. Chakra gives you an up-to-date KDE 4 desktop on top of Arch, using the Arch repositories for most pakages.
(Btw.: their installer is the most beautiful I have ever seen) 14 • DW's out of date reviews page (by Sertse on 2009-01-19 11:24:50 GMT from Australia)
Any chance of updating this? http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=reviews
DW has MANY more reviews of distros since :) , prob one of the most outdated sections of the site. 15 • Arch Linux (by Gigi on 2009-01-19 11:27:10 GMT from United States)
The Arch beginner's guide and installation are among the best out there. Even someone with moderate linux experience should be able to follow them. Apart from that, the wiki is top notch and has excellent articles for configuring network, KDE, GNOME etc.
Oh yeah.. rolling release ;-) I upgraded from GNOME 2.22 to 2.24 and KDE 4.0.2 to KDE 4.1.0 without any major issues at all. Fluxbox, Icewm, XFCE and Openbox have all worked so far. Only time I ran into problems after upgrade was with Virtualbox after the kernel was bumped from 2.6.25 to 2.6.26. It was an upstream bug IIRC and was eventually fixed within a week. Arch package repositories also have a wide selection of packages that are on-par with even the bigger distros. And If it's not there, you always have AUR.
Having tried out every distro out there, I realized (just as Chris rightly pointed out) that no distro was perfect. Given this fact, I have settled down to Arch on my laptop because it is easier to configure it to my tastes than any other distro. It sure feels good to have a lot of control over the system and stay updated with pacman -Syu.
Arch does take some time and work to configure but once done, it should JUST WORK(TM) 16 • Fedora 11 (by George on 2009-01-19 11:36:25 GMT from Greece)
I think that Fedora 11 will be called Leonidas and not Leonidis 17 • Arch Linux (by Jesper Sandström on 2009-01-19 11:52:58 GMT from Sweden)
Great to see that Arch is finally getting some time in the spotlight. Despite the rather basic, geeky approach to things, I would definitely not call it less user friendly than, say, Ubuntu. Surely, you have to learn a lot more about your system and do a bit more manual work in the beginning. Though, as YOU set your system up from start to finish, you will be in greater control of it and thus in the end having an easier-to-maintain system. 18 • Arch Glitches (by anon on 2009-01-19 11:53:08 GMT from Norway)
From the Archlinux review:
"It seems to me that a driver which has this sort of problem should not have found its way into the stable tree until the other required packages were also updated."
Spot on. While I like Arch and use it as my main OS, people doing serious work and/or with serious schedules are strongly advised to choose a more stable distro. You really, really don't want to find that you can no longer connect to your DSL modem after a kernel upgrade, or that functions in your GUI are suddenly gone, or an important app has quit working normally, or your GUI has disappeared altogether, etc.
Alas, with Archlinux this is 'normal procedure'. Most times there are workarounds, or ways to fix the problems, but then you are spending your time doing that instead of doing what you had planned to do. Quality is apparently not part of the KISS philosophy.
What is perhaps even worse is how it's frowned upon when problems are brought up in the user fora. One should take pride in NOT helping the hapless user.
Oh well. Archlinux shines when it works, and most of it does work most of the time, and I have nothing better to do than tinker with it, so let it crash...
You have been warned. 19 • No subject (by Franz on 2009-01-19 12:16:15 GMT from United States)
I agree 100% with your comment. IMO the packages are not tested enough and how is Arch security? 20 • @ #9 (by Jose on 2009-01-19 12:21:52 GMT from United States)
And I will continue to post it whenever arch linux is reviewed. 21 • #19 - Arch security (by anon on 2009-01-19 12:36:10 GMT from Norway)
Franz wrote: "IMO the packages are not tested enough and how is Arch security?"
No idea... I trust in security by obscurity and reinstallations :) 22 • @ #20 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-19 12:36:28 GMT from Australia)
Do you think your opinion actually counts in any other distro that you do not develop yourself? It seems the Arch guys are just being upfront about it. 23 • @No. 18 (by Michael on 2009-01-19 12:41:16 GMT from Germany)
IMHO a problem of Arch is the gap between core and extra repo´s on the one side and community on the other. E. g. my Acer laptop needs the acerhk kernel-module for the WLAN-switch. In Arch the kernel resides in core (of course), while the kernel-module is provided by a guy ("trusted user") via the community repo. Hope I never run a 'pacman -Syu' in the timespan after a kernel-upgrade and before the acerhk-upgrade. :-/ 24 • Operatonal field of Arch (by Benjamin Hackl on 2009-01-19 12:48:55 GMT from Austria)
Arch linux sounds great for a server or some try-out box, but I doubt it would be perfect for the desktop (Some might say here I'm wrong). Sure, there are times we want to twiddle the best out of our systems, but usually after doing this for a while (year or so) you get bored with adapting/editing loads of (new) configuration files, fixing broken packages, dependencies and so on.
I for myself run two different flavors of Linux systems. The minimalistic one on my personal servers (I use Gentoo for it suits my needs best) and some *buntu on the laptop. I don't want to do much configuration on a system that I use almost every day. It ought to work. That's why I dropped Slackware, Gentoo, etc. from the desktop some time ago. 25 • at #20 (by Eduardo Romero on 2009-01-19 13:02:24 GMT from Puerto Rico)
And I thank you for that, you are doing us "Arch Linux Developers" a great favor.
As the last paragraph of that article says, we give you the power to be your own Arch Linux Overlord. 26 • PureOS (by elcaset on 2009-01-19 13:25:33 GMT from United States)
PureOS looks good. Debian, KDE, & VLC. Many of my favourite things! 27 • No subject (by mandog on 2009-01-19 13:43:59 GMT from United Kingdom)
No 18 You are talking out of your a##. Arch forums are very helpful but they object to bad attitudes are answering the same question over and over again, The Wiki answers 90% of questions and forum members write and update the Wiki, 28 • Archlinux (by Greg on 2009-01-19 13:51:24 GMT from Greece)
I appreciate the fact that you "reviewed" Archlinux, after all its my "As for my dream distribution, Arch Linux comes pretty darn close." too. But i didnt like the article at all. The truth is i dont value reviews much, especially those who come from people who just try distributions in an emulator but they should be written after after actual use. Otherwise they are shallow, pointless, and unfair to the disributions, no matter how praising they are.
One example here. What you write about vim. FYI Archlinux comes with a vi package which is actually vim without X, Python and the other 15 packages Vim needs. And yes, no distribution is perfect. But if you actually had used it you would have found downsides too, like eg. No.18. 29 • Arch downsides (by PP on 2009-01-19 13:58:00 GMT from United Kingdom)
Used Arch on my lappy for about 1/2 year. Went back to openSUSE because:
- Lack of packages, or broken packeges (I remember Gramps just didn't work) - If you move around a lot (laptop!) you might lose your nerves in configuring new WPAs, printers etc here and there. - Upgrades might (will) break the system sometimes. Need to check the website before upgrades. - Security is a bit of a question mark.
Other than that, I really recommend trying it. I learned more about Linux than ever before during the months I used Arch. And the community IS great! And it's faster than anything I've seen. 30 • Arch, couldn't live without it! (by Nicolas Heinen on 2009-01-19 13:59:54 GMT from Rwanda)
I start using Linux back in 2002, couldn't kept a distribution more than 6 months on my Desktop, since more than 2 years than I'm on Arch, haven't tried anything else!!! Once you get used to Arch, it's really hard to get back to something else! I installe it on every computer/laptop/notebook/server that I can :-) 31 • No subject (by Ara on 2009-01-19 14:02:10 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Pacman will perform after installing and removing thousands of packages." I've had my current arch install for over a year and a quick "cat /var/log/pacman.log | egrep 'installed|removed|upgrade' | wc -l" shows that I've installed, removed and upgraded 6221 packages and pacman is still fast.
@7 Have you tried pacdiffviewer? 32 • Arch (by matyas on 2009-01-19 14:49:42 GMT from Argentina)
I think any distro with a rolling release system is prone to have a package lagging behind. If you want consistency al over your packages, look for a distro that updates all his packages at once every 6 months. And that normally doesn´t help either. I warn you a rolling release system is ADDICTIVE.
One thing I really like about Arch is they almost never patch a package. Packages are really vanilla and as intended by developers. If you find a bug you report it upstream so it really gets fixed. 33 • RE: 28 Archlinux (by ladislav on 2009-01-19 15:10:57 GMT from Taiwan)
Did you actually read the article? The author clearly states that he has been using Arch Linux for the last two months. He only reached for the emulator to take some installation screenshots. 34 • Better reviews (by Omari on 2009-01-19 15:21:03 GMT from United States)
@28 -- I see your point. I wouldn't bash Chris' review--we didn't pay anything for it, after all, and it's hard to write something up. Certainly his impressions are very valuable. But there are lots of "I installed Distro X and used it for a few days and here is my review" posts out there. They inevitably miss things.
All distros have plusses and minuses, but the user doesn't really discover them all until she uses a distro for a least a few months, not a few days.
What would really be valuable is more reviews from long-time distro users--objective reviews covering the ups and downs of a distro, and one that admits that while the distro may not be the best for everyone, here are its strong points and its weak points.
For instance I use Debian stable on my desktop. I'd say the upsides are that upgrades are not too frequent, so I'm not always mucking with things the way I would have to on a 6-month upgrade cycle. Debian QA for stable releases is outstanding. I spend little time fiddling with the system.
The downsides are that the packages can be a bit old. This is rarely a problem as I find I don't need new shiny things, but yes, a newer Firefox/Iceweasel would be nice. Another downer is the unpredictable releases. But I accept these downsides--after all, excellent QA and infrequent updates necessarily lead to these downsides. Can't have it both ways.
I think Linux.com used to post reviews like this and I found them illuminating. Maybe I will put my money where my mouth is and volunteer to write one of these for Debian stable for DWW. 35 • Some thoughts and responses about Arch (by KimTjik on 2009-01-19 15:24:54 GMT from Sweden)
RE:29 - you show a good attitude in explaining the basis for your own choice, rather than claiming some universal truth. I don't use Gramps, but reading your post I installed it and it works. I guess the issues you experienced had to do with ongoing bigger changes of Python, something that leads me to another thought:
When some report problems with broken packages it doesn't mean that packaging is poorly done - at least I've never seen an example of that - but in a rolling release there's side effects when something having great impact on many packages changes, yes like python. Suddenly the code has to be overhauled. Hence it's not that Arch-packagers suddenly became lazy, but it takes time and effort to recompile and adjust all those packages affected by the change... or even to be aware that a package doesn't work any more. In many cases using ABS solves such problems, but sometimes it takes longer time to sort out the effects certain changes in code has.
I understand that it's simpler to assume that a problem always has its root cause within the ranks of the distribution, but if you choose Arch it's good to think beyond that boarder. Still I haven't had any more problems running Arch for the past two years than running any other distribution, rather less because its structure is made to ease the way when its time for troubleshooting.
This could apply to other distributions as well with a similar approach. Many distributions though freeze some parts of the system until next release, but Arch is never in a frozen status. This is a feature some prefer and some better live without, but that's what's so great about Linux. To demand that every distribution should appeal to every user won't accomplish anything but disappointment. I also agree with Eduardo Romero that Jose is doing us a great favour by give readers here a more complete basis for a decision. A conscious decision results in less disappointment if expectations aren't fulfilled. 36 • In the end Arch is nothing... (by Johnny Bench on 2009-01-19 15:34:25 GMT from United States)
All that hard work, compiling, and tweaking, and the hours it takes to get you system just right. Mandriva is faster! With the benefit of not having to futz with all the nonsense of building the "Erector Set".
Sure basic no desktop, no nothing will boot in 9 seconds. But whats the point. My XP boots completely in 15 seconds!
Archlinux, among it's compatriots, is just for saying, "I built it". So what! I want a system that works, and works well, and is complete.
I'll keep Mandriva, Ubuntu, thank you very much. You can have your tinker-toy Arch or any other build as you go nonsense. 37 • Debian Gnome (by Worthingman bin Matsunaga on 2009-01-19 16:05:32 GMT from Ecuador)
I really want to switch to Debian unstable, but the problem is the status of Gnome in Debian. The Gnome packages always take a long time to be updated and are incomplete. Anyone know if there is a way to run the current Gnome in Debian?
Thanks! 38 • RE: 36 and to others with the same viewpoint (by KimTjik on 2009-01-19 16:08:33 GMT from Sweden)
It could be good to know that the Arch forum is open minded when it comes to other distribution, and its expected that members show due respect to all. That's one of the main reasons for why I got interested in Arch.
Nevertheless I'm happy for you that you found two distributions, Mandriva and Ubuntu, that enable you to enjoy computing. 39 • @36 (by matyas on 2009-01-19 16:49:36 GMT from Argentina)
"You can have your tinker-toy Arch or any other build as you go nonsense."
Arch comes with binary packages. Building is an option 40 • RE: 36 • In the end Arch is nothing... (by NeoWolf on 2009-01-19 17:40:59 GMT from United States)
It seems a bit odd to belittle people while suggesting that they're arrogant. Most Arch users are happy to recommend that people just what they want to use, even if it's not Arch.
More to the point though, it's not just about wanting something you put together yourself. Some people want something that "just works", and that's great. Easy to understand to the core. Some people want something that works "how they want it to work" though. That's the kind of audience distros like Arch, Gentoo, Debian, etc. that leave a good deal of choices on the user attracts. There's nothing inherently wrong in either approach, as they're not trying to get the same people. 41 • What gives with SOAD? (by gnomic on 2009-01-19 17:46:53 GMT from New Zealand)
This project may be very interesting, but it's hard to tell, as it seems to be impossible to download. Home site and a mirror both timed out during download, now the file appears to have been pulled altogether. Perhaps unready for world-wide exposure on the internet? 42 • Re: Arch (by Anonymous on 2009-01-19 18:01:58 GMT from United States) so to get this working correctly I had to create an xorg.conf file (with sudo X -configure) and then edit this appropriately. This is where new users will potentially fall down - when something doesn't work as expected, you have to configure it yourself. But then that's the audience that Arch Linux is directed at, those willing to tinker with their system and learn.
Why does Arch get blamed for something that is a bug in X.org? It is not Arch's fault that xserver-xorg doesn't recognize your touchpad, nor is it Arch's fault that you had to creat an xorg.conf and edit it appropriately for your input device to be useful. Yet because of the problem they get the billing of being targeted at "those willing to learn." Why not be honest and say that with the new direction of "user-friendly" X "I had to re-create an xorg.conf because someone missed the mark on what constitutes user friendliness?" 43 • ArchLinux (by stuffjeff on 2009-01-19 18:15:19 GMT from Netherlands)
NIce to see a nicxe review about Arch. I started using Arch as a total noob (and I'm not a so-called expert even close) but the install is actually easy and dare I say logical.
I just love pacman and the only time the rolling release mechanism caused me any trouble was around the 0.7 snapshot (yes I've stayed with Arch that long already).
The forum and wiki are great and there aren't many problems that can't be solved with a quick search there.
At the moment I'm using Arch on both my notebooks (i686 and X86_64) and loving the simplicity of keeping up-to-date with one command every two weeks or so.
What I didn't see in the review, but I absolutely love is the netcfg2 networking scripts. They're simple as in one simple command to bring up a profile and are dead usefull for notebooks that have to log-on to wireless routers in various places. Just copy the example configfile rename it to the name you want your profile to have, edit the configuration options like wpa passkey, essid etc and bring it up with the command netcfg2 <profilename>. That's keeping it simple without losing control imho.
44 • Another Arch comment (by Edude on 2009-01-19 18:25:31 GMT from United States)
I like the idea behind Arch. But it is a bit much unless you are fairly experienced with Linux. For those wanting something similar though a bit easier to get going I would suggest Sidux. Have only been using Linux for a couple years, and Sidux gets many similar benefits of Arch. For me one of the big ones is learning more about Linux anyway.
Not a negative comment on Arch here, just that for now it isn't for me. Sidux is a bit more user friendly for the less experienced because it gives you a usable desktop system right off the bat, and still is very fast. I suspect there are a good many out there in my situation. 45 • Arch Linux (by Terlmann on 2009-01-19 18:26:54 GMT from United States)
Power of debian with flexibility of gentoo. You're missing out if you don't take a look at sabayonlinux 4.0. The sabayon project hates me because I'm a bit of a troll at times, but I seriously recommend looking into their distro if that's what you seriously want. 46 • Lots of Arch hate here (by davemc on 2009-01-19 18:41:48 GMT from United States)
I haven't tried Arch yet, but at least I understand its purpose. It is a niche distro and there would not be Arch, if there was not a demand for it. In point of fact, the particular niche Arch fills is very large in my business and it is used extensively in some incredibly important roles. It is a credit to Arch that it is as good as it is for what it does, and it should be on everyone's short list of "must tries". 47 • rolling release (by Andri on 2009-01-19 18:48:28 GMT from Italy)
I'm an happy Arch user on my laptop. What I can say is that I used for more than one year the old Kanotix, based on sid, and the packages there broke constantly.... you couldn't really configure anything since that config could be erased the week after... so far no problems with Arch, maybe it's just luck but I don't think so. the forums are really helpful. for sure, I hope the guys behind Chakra will build a good installer, since the Arch installation can take you some time. and I love AUR packages and PKGBUILDS, since you can bump up version easily, so follow a svn package is a breeze 48 • Arch linux (by Morey Chan on 2009-01-19 19:09:10 GMT from United States)
The users who write about Arch in good terms may cause others to give it a try. But the learning curve is "old time linux," it must be admitted.
That is a small nitch in computing, but a valid one just like acquiring a kit for anything that also comes already built is valid: cars, electronic equipment, painting, etc.
So do not go into Arch or Slackware or some others with the same attitude one goes into with Vector or Mint or Sabayon; different genres altogether. :) 49 • Jamie Watson's article on small distributions (by whug on 2009-01-19 19:31:02 GMT from Switzerland)
This is not a well researched article. This Jamie Watson appears to be a mass production author (Vielschreiber in German).
One error on the use of the KDE desktop in one of the refereed distributions was corrected by a reader's comment on the article - see there. Another error which shows that Watson does not really test what he writes about is his claim that Puppy does not permit the use of a Swiss keyboard. This is true if you have to use VESA, but Xorg permits it, of course. Moreover, there is the French Toutou (translation of Puppy), which permits the French version of the Swiss keyboard also with VESA.
Regrettable that the writer of the Distrowatch weekly has not caught such blunders. 50 • Arch (by Andrea Ratto on 2009-01-19 20:03:05 GMT from Italy)
Dammit now I have to try Arch. We have the very same idea of a perfect distro. 51 • Read the Article, and THINK before you Comment (by J.A. Watson on 2009-01-19 20:06:05 GMT from Switzerland)
I am certainly not a "mass production author", nor a Vielschreiber. I do in fact try everything that I write about - and if you were to do that, and to read carefully what I write, your comments would be more correct and relevant.
I see no reference to KDE in the SMALL Linux article, and I see no correction about it in comments. What in the world are you talking about?
My article does not say that Puppy does not PERMIT the use of a Swiss keyboard, it says that there is no Swiss German keyboard in the initial keyboard selection list, but there is a Swiss French keyboard in that list. If you would take the time to try it, you would find out that is in fact correct. I am perfectly capable of getting whatever keyboard I want working, once I have the system running - but that was not my objective, and I am not going to assume that such manipulation is of interest to the general readership of ZDNet UK.
Last, but certainly not least, my article was about PUPPY LINUX, not Toutou, nor any other variation or derivative of it. So why would I care what keyboards Toutou supports, and why would I write about it?
READ, and THINK, before you comment. 52 • a noob's thoughts (by tmc on 2009-01-19 20:50:31 GMT from Hungary)
As an Arch fan is hard to keep myself away from this forum, but as a noob (what I am) I can't argue with unimpeachable technical details. So, take my subjective two cents:
1.) Raw materials The linux kernel itself isn't perfect, the desktop environments (Gnome, KDE or whatever you choose) are far from perfect, the scripts may have some errors, the drivers or the apps are buggy, too. Arch, like other distros is made by kernel+DE+scripts+drivers+apps (as far as I know), so how can we expect from a distro, even from Arch to be flawless??
2.) Recipe The people/crew behind distros pick some this, drop some that and mix it. They might drop some spice (read artwork), put it on a plate and serve it. Hot or chilled.
3.) The Consumer "Take it easy, it might hurt." - "C'mon baby, I like it hot." - We are so different, and like it in so different ways.
Now ask me "which is the best distro?", and I will ask you "for who?". Or I might answer with a more trivial question: "Which car is the best?" Do you know somebody who knows the answer? My advice is to take a distro which suits best your needs, your habits and your level of education then live happy with it, or read more and change it. The clever ones can make their own distro.
We are here to prove that our preferred distro is bigger than other's... As for me, I'm here to attest that Arch isn't only for geeks. I can't contradict those who never heard, heard but can't install, can install but don't feel comfortable, feel comfortable but once were disappointed by Arch. Arch isn't better than your favorite distro, and your favorite distro isn't better than other's favorite distro. All is about choice. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Few words about the Arch install and my learning curve (who is not interested, should turn his mouse wheel and skip this part). At first sight (and at the second, too) the "install environment" is ugly, looks complicated, it takes long. You have to read, to understand, to decide, to test. Sometimes the default options might help, but at some critical points you have to type something before pressing Enter. In other words it was fun, was a mysterious journey in an unknown labyrinth. Editing this, editing that... I was telling to myself: "Look Ma, I'm the King of the Terminal".
My main goal was to learn. It wasn't reached entirely (I learn slow and forget quickly, like the elephant babies), but I've got addicted - as @32. matyas said - and Arch became the first, later the only distro on my laptop. Everything was configured as described in archwiki or in some forums. Now it just works. I'm waiting for the predicted Big Crash after each update, but nothing special happens, the End-of-the-World is always delayed. Although I look at it daily like at a miracle, it became the most boring distro in my life: only $yaourt -Syu --aur and it is fresh and shiny, evergreen. No six-month-distrohoping cycle, or as I call "twice an year Christmas". I don't use Arch because I'm a genius, rather because I'm lazy. Lazy to install and configure, then when everything looks and works as desired, to reinstall a new release and configure it again.
When I did the second install (Mint was changed with Arch on a desktop computer), everything went so smooth, even I had to set up much more peripherals and due to this, much more apps. Next install will be when I have to change the hard disk or the laptop/computer itself. Hope archwiki will still be there :)
Well done, Chris. 53 • Arch (by dooooo on 2009-01-19 21:10:46 GMT from Jordan)
I've been using Arch for 2 months .
Debian Sid/Sidux users should really give Arch a try . It's not that hard to use after passing the installation and initial configuration phase . It's more stable and funnier to use .
I installed Arch on a laptop used by my family . With 'wicd' controlling wireless networks , They have no difficulty connecting and surfing the Internet . 54 • Arch. (by M on 2009-01-19 22:10:08 GMT from Australia)
2009 is my 10th year using Linux. In that time I have tried at least a dozen different distributions and many versions of each. I have now used Arch for just over a year and I can honestly say that I may well still be using it in another 10 years time. There is no 'best' distro but Arch suits me better than any other I have tried. 55 • Arch: It depends on your computer (by Duhnonymous on 2009-01-19 22:19:31 GMT from United States)
I could see using Arch if I wanted an old computer to work with some of the latest software, but I have better things to do with my time than tweak every last detail of my hardware configuration. My computer uses Ubuntu because I have a nice computer that really *needs* all the automatic hardware detection it can get. 56 • number one (by ema on 2009-01-19 22:21:58 GMT from Italy)
There is a right say:once you try arch you never go back. The only right thing to do is to give it a try and discover how simple,clean,fast,easy is on a daily usage. All my pc and laptops in hotel run arch and me and friends of mine just stopped testing and burning distro. One single file to manage most everything you need; have real newbie friends that once have installed just love it.Great community,reply always fast and solving. Long life to arch! 57 • RE: 55 - Arch isn't really designed for old computers (by KimTjik on 2009-01-19 22:34:37 GMT from Sweden)
I see your point, and yes it works very well on slow Intel Pentium II laptops, but keep in mind that Arch is optimized for newer hardware, hence the oldest you get is i686. Further more the x86_64 version is very popular, and my guess is that few distributions has such a large part running 64bit compared to 32bit systems (see excellent Wiki entry about how to run a chrooted 32bit directory and hence not "taint" your 64bit installations with 32bit compatibility packages). Detect hardware is a core capability of all modern distributions using an up-to-date kernel.
Hardware isn't the issue here. User preference is. What your computer needs isn't decided by the computer but by your own expectations. It's not the computer which uses, but you who use the computer as a tool. If your toolbox is run on Ubuntu, then that's fine as long as you're satisfied. 58 • Airlines running on linux (by Nick on 2009-01-19 23:06:21 GMT from United Kingdom)
On a recent Continental Airlines' flight from the US to the UK the system rebooted to reveal a penguin and linux boot screen. Snapped this on my camera:
Distrowatch is such a hub that, I think, if it were possible for reviewers to "get famous" by landing on the reviews page, it might actually encourage more people to do reviews. I like to read about the trials and triumphs of others, esp. since I can only afford to distro-hop about once per year -- I like to hedge my bets by knowing at least a few people with my moderate-at-best talent level have already succeeded with a distro before I try it.
What's next? Madriva, Ubuntu, and OpenSuze are on my list of "maybes" and have plenty of reviews, but PCLinuxOS, PC-BSD, Sidux, Sabayon, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or I'm even thinking about Arch... all of these also seem really promising, but, before the plunge, I'd like to read another half-dozen reviews each ;) 60 • Arch Was An Ok System (by MetalHead on 2009-01-19 23:58:22 GMT from United States)
I'm more of a gentoo, FreeBSD/OpenBSD fan. One day I decided to give Arch a try.. I thought wow! I really like this O/S. It was just as fast as Gentoo/FreeBSD etc. Everything was fine until Arch updated to X-1.5/7.4 I updated the system via pacman daily like always and couldn't get (X) to start.
I'm like WTF happend?!! Yeah, I had seen that pacman was updating Xorg but I never gave it much thought until I rebooted. After the reboot I could not get (X) to start.. I re-run Xorg -configure etc and got back into Fluxbox but no ATI-driver...It was running Vesa. I thought well, there was a quick fix to my problem, went to the forum only to see that others were having the same problem. It was like well, (X-1.5) Is now using 'HAL' and you need to install this and you need to disable that and add this and bla, bla, bla....
Too make a long story short it was a mess -- I recall post where people were asking how do I downgrade back to X-1.4 this isn't working etc, etc...
I liked Arch up until this incadent..But I'm done with it......At least for now.. 61 • LIVE CD Review Wish List (by tj on 2009-01-20 01:21:04 GMT from United States)
Hard to satisfy everyone when you write a review. Chris's is a good one.
Jamie Watson's article about the Three Small Linux Distributions is well written and interesting.
I don't pretend to represent the bulk of Linux users, but with respect to LIVE CDs, some of us would appreciate reviewers who would include answers to the following questions...
- Can you run without root privileges? (for internet use) - Are printer drivers on the CD? - Can it save configuration changes for future sessions?
I wish reviews of larger general purpose LIVE CDs would include
- Is a GUI firewall included? - Will it play Flash and MP3?
Sometimes some of this info is included in FAQs at distro web sites, but often some of it is missing. 62 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 02:34:09 GMT from United States)
Arch is fun, but honestly, I tried it because I thought it would help me "learn more linux." I can't say it does that. I think that the wiki is too well written and Pacman makes things too easy. Therefore, aside from minimal changes to /etc/rc.conf, it's just like running Ubuntu from a minimal install (not that that's a bad thing, just not helpful if you're trying to really learn about the bones of a system.) 63 • Arch (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 02:34:19 GMT from United States)
For a long time I had intentions of giving Arch a spin. The thing that made me interested in Arch is the rolling release structure. (I figured it would be a good way to avoid having an obsolete toolchain from banging on my door every year or so.) The thing that kept me away is Arch's goofy package manager and it's obtuse assortment of option flags. I finally got around to giving Arch a spin a couple of days ago and it became painfully obvious that by the time, say, a Debian install would become obsolete, Arch's rolling release (which might spare me from having to perform a complete distro upgrade) would eventually become so full of upgrade cruft and breakage that reinstalling would probably be almost a necessity anyway. My curiosity of Arch has been satisfied. It's the most over-rated distro in linuxland. 64 • Arch/OpenBSD (by MetalHead on 2009-01-20 03:25:59 GMT from United States)
I agree with post 63 with regards to Arch.
Why don't the guys/gals from D.W. ever give us a review of say, FreeBSD or OpenBSD? OpenBSD-4.4 rocks!
Not once have I seen anyone from D.W. install and review OpenBSD. Hint, hint....Install it, give it a try and write a review of your findings. With OpenBSD you won't find any faults in security - you will also find the speed of OpenBSD faster than that of Ubuntu and Suse etc..
Will the guys/gals a D.W. install and reveiw OpenBSD? I doubt it... 65 • FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Any Bee Ess Dee... (by Seemzlyke Agoodidea on 2009-01-20 04:26:03 GMT from Australia)
The folks at DW may not be well acquainted with the BSD... but seems like you seem to know... Why not provide an installation and review of the various BSD flavours?
I'd be interested to read it...
I gave FreeBSD 7 a try on a spare PC I had sometime just after it was released... just out of curiosity. I'd like to see a comparison of the BSD's for desktop use - pros and cons, ease of use, etc... 66 • Re:#62 (by Misfit138 on 2009-01-20 04:26:03 GMT from United States)
"...I thought it would help me "learn more linux." I can't say it does that. I think that the wiki is too well written and Pacman makes things too easy."
This is the funniest thing I have read this year. 67 • No subject (by MetalHead on 2009-01-20 05:37:43 GMT from United States)
Response:65
Pros & Cons: BSD vs Linux. As for FreeBSD just like Gentoo and other source based Linux distro's you can build everything from source. FreeBSD is nothing but kernel & userland. Set you make flags in /etc/make.conf and rebuild world/kernel and then build Xorg and the rest of your desktop system from source using your flags via /etc/make.conf
OpenBSD is a different animal: OpenBSD will give you a base install /Kernel/Userland and you then use pkg_add to install kde/firefox etc..The OBSD ports tree offers around 5,000+ packages...but the OBSD team had went through those programs looking for back doors and overflows etc... If you look at bugtraq. You will notice that OBSD/TEAM have found most of the programing errors. OPBSD may use FireFox 2.x but you can bet that it's secure., that's not counting ProPolice and other stack based overflow protections.
As for linux - Linux is only secure as the packages they provide.. A good example is Zone Alarm..Uh who and where was ZA phoning home to? Well the info is out there if you look for it...After that, I would NEVER EVER trust CENT/OS What does a windows firewall have to to with Linux?? Well you may want to check out WHO is building theses BINARIES.I will say no more on this subject....DO YOUR OWN homework. Funny thing about CENT/OS D.W. use to name the country where this O/S was coded, gee they don't do that anymore...(I wonder why)
All I can say www.openbsd.org 68 • RE: 58 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 05:43:02 GMT from United States)
Nice catch!
Why did it reboot?
Just curious. 69 • RE: 63 (by netromo on 2009-01-20 09:53:59 GMT from Norway)
I've been using Arch for more than 3 years. No "upgrade cruft and breakage." No reinstalling. Running beautifully. Enough said. 70 • RE: 64 Arch/OpenBSD (by ladislav on 2009-01-20 11:08:05 GMT from Taiwan) Will the guys/gals a D.W. install and review OpenBSD? I doubt it...
Yes, they are a bit old, but you can't say that we've never done it. 71 • A BSD review would be nice, but on the desktop they don't shine:-) (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 12:00:39 GMT from United States)
I'm a happy Freebsd user, and have been hopping along with it since version 6.3 and upgrading by compiling everything. It worked all the time and I had imho the best desktop system I could imagine. The stability, the upgradability and the performance were all very satisfying. I dind't care less about the lack of online multimedia support, like flash and the like.
However, I've made a few mistakes by not checking the /usr/ports/UPDATING file when ugrading my ports. I started noticing some problems and that's when I decided I had enough of this compiling thing and installed Ubuntu.
However, I NOT regret the time I've spent on learning the FreeBSD way, and I can say for sure that I improved my unix skills!!! I will always be a FreeBSD user, but have decided that will be mainly for the server. On the Desktop, I won't be installing it anytime soon. 72 • Yaourt (by Archer on 2009-01-20 15:03:41 GMT from France)
In fact, yaourt is available as a binary package from "repo.archlinux.fr.". And the Community repo contains lots of binary packages, so yaourt is only needed for "unsupported" things. 73 • Please, do go on. (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 15:56:56 GMT from United States)
"Enough said" is short for "Enough said, if I say any more, my frickin' head is gonna explode." 74 • #73 - Saying something (by anon on 2009-01-20 16:37:36 GMT from Norway)
Yep. Anyone who claims having used Arch for 3 years with no "upgrade cruft and breakage." is being errr..., inaccurate.
Nuff said ;) 75 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 18:11:19 GMT from United States)
To people who assume that over time "upgrade cruft and breakage" accumulate on the system -- what package managers are you used to? Because I'll make not to use them in the future :) Pacman, correctly used of course, certainly doesn't leave this sort of stuff behind. 76 • Hey, look (by Nobody important on 2009-01-20 20:24:02 GMT from United States)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3 is released! YAY!
I can't wait for CentOS to come, now. Both projects are quite fantastic. 77 • Re #60 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 21:16:27 GMT from United States)
That's what you get for just updating your system without first going to the forum to find out what's going on. To blindly update without checking is asking for trouble. Check the Arch site first. Why do you need the latest up-to-the-second updates anyway? I always make sure there is water in the pool before I jump in. You have to assume SOME responsibility in upgrading if you are going to run a rolling release system like Arch. 78 • Speeds of the distros/OSs (by Lizard on 2009-01-20 21:37:49 GMT from India)
Based on my own use of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Slackware, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian, I can say
when it comes to performance/throughput. 79 • RE: 8 and 20 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-20 22:17:22 GMT from Germany)
I get the feeling that the poster of #8 and #20 is one of those "upright Americans" that suffered to long from the Bush administration. Arch is not a democracy, so it MUST be evil. Guess that every computer infested with that evil piece of software should be sent for proper treatment to Guantanamo immediately... 80 • I agree, it's time for an in-depth OpenBSD review. (by Some Hoser on 2009-01-20 22:33:41 GMT from Canada)
A four year old review of OpenBSD 3.5 doesn't cut it, no potential convert is going to install such an old version. It's the equivalent of pointing to a review of Ubuntu 5... it's interesting, but not very relevant.
I was glad to see Arch in spotlight this week. I like the direction I see DW moving in: giving more distros in-depth exposure serves the long-term interests of free software as a whole. Cheers! 81 • #77 • On Due Diligence (by anon on 2009-01-21 01:11:16 GMT from Norway)
True enough, but a lot of people who 'happened' to let pacman upgrade their kernel to v. "2.6.28-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jan 6 09:25:48 UTC 2009 x86_64" in the last few days had no way to foresee what was going to hit them. Personally I had to resort to the Fallback kernel.
What do you tell these users? Yes, they can 'downgrade' to a/the previous kernel, if they still have it and know how. Then reinstall the packages whose functionality was swallowed by the kernel and turned into (enhanced) modules, hoping the old kernel plays nice with the rest of the system. Meanwhile many of them cannot connect to the Internet, given that the enhanced modules with the ethernet/wifi capabilities don't work and even the Fallback kernel does not work.
Think I exaggerate? Go and have a peek into the Arch user forum. Note also the helpful advice and explanations from the Arch developers, if you can find it...
Arch is the most fun Linux distro I have found, but also a very 'dangerous' one. 82 • Arch, BSDs, etc. (by Bob W on 2009-01-21 01:15:49 GMT from Austria)
Tried almost everything out there and IMHO only the major distros fit the average user (provided they fit his/her hardware). Distros such as Arch and the 3 BSDs are mostly suitable for people who can afford to waste time. I have installed Arch a couple of times and I think it is a great distro. But I simply do not get the point why I should use grandpa's techniques setting up the system.
From zero to, say, YouTube it is a couple of clicks on most major distros nowadays, while on Arch the keyboard will start to feel some wear and tear while installing all the necessary packages and completing configuration. Same thing applies to the console-centric BSDs. Once installed and configured they just feel a bit slower than Arch.
Of course if someone is interested in the educational virtues of performing repeating tasks (e.g. hammering "pacman" over and over again) I will understand. But I am a programmer and I therefore appreciate the value of automated configuration - even if it was not done by myself.
To summarize this: I think that while Arch is very well maintained some of its concepts are becoming more and more obsolete nowadays for most users. Even more obsolete seems to be any BSD I've encountered so far. Linux has obviously leaped way ahead of them. Therefore I will not join in blaming DW for failing to deliver an up-to-date in-depth OpenBSD review. 83 • RE: 77 (by Popeye on 2009-01-21 01:30:30 GMT from Sweden)
"That's what you get for just updating your system without first going to the forum to find out what's going on. To blindly update without checking is asking for trouble. Check the Arch site first. Why do you need the latest up-to-the-second updates anyway? I always make sure there is water in the pool before I jump in. You have to assume SOME responsibility in upgrading if you are going to run a rolling release system like Arch."
Typical Arch answer. It's always the user's fault when an ordinary system upgrade with Pacman breaks important parts of your system, like kernel or Xorg. Well, I'm through with Arch and all of its problems. They are no longer my problems, I've already switched over to another distro. Thanks for the fish. 84 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-01-21 01:40:00 GMT from United States)
So repeatedly navigating through GUI windows is not repetitive? And how do you script those tasks that you repeatedly perform via GUI interfaces?
"Zero (..) to YouTube", posting comments on distrowatch.com -- indeed, you must live a very busy life and simply have no time to waste :) 85 • #84 (by Bob W on 2009-01-21 03:39:18 GMT from Austria)
"So repeatedly navigating through GUI windows is not repetitive?"
Of course it is. But most of us tend to think since the past millennium that clicking is in most cases faster and more comfortable than typing. Seen any modern server interfaces lately? The thing Arch guys don't seem to get is that one can fall back to good ol' scripting on a GUI system whenever he likes or needs it. Konsole for example is pretty much superior to any of Arches initial Fn text consoles. It is getting more and more difficult nowadays to find some obsolete hardware which gives sufficient excuse to initially install a console-only system for memory constraint or whatever else reasons.
"... must live a very busy life and simply have no time to waste :)"
Wrong. Due to the fact that I nowadays avoid installing Arch once more, I have plenty of time to test several other (modern) distros instead AND post comments on DW :-)
But once again - I think Arch ain't bad at all. It just reminds me of a basically robust car where its proud owner needs to add electric windows, power steering, cruise control, etc., himself - in case he wants such exotic features (bragging rights included if he succeeds ...). 86 • In reply (by Chris on 2009-01-21 03:40:52 GMT from Australia)
28 • Archlinux by Greg Hi Greg, I agree and tend to run distros for a while before providing a review. I have actually been using Arch since the beginning of November 2008, so while I am not an expert I did give it a good work out.
I know that vi is included by default, but I wanted vim. And yes, vim pulls in X support and all sorts of things - I wasn't complaining, it was expected. I just took this opportunity to mention how someone could re-build the packages if they wanted to.
42 • Re: Arch by Anonymous Why does Arch get blamed for something that is a bug in X.org? It is not Arch's fault that xserver-xorg doesn't recognize your touchpad, nor is it Arch's fault that you had to creat an xorg.conf and edit it appropriately for your input device to be useful.
Because that's the point of a distribution - they are supposed to put together packages that work. And if a package doesn't work then it is their fault.
Some packages require other libraries. If your distribution updates glibc and breaks every binary on your machine I think you'd agree. 87 • arch no sweat (by gnomic on 2009-01-21 08:16:19 GMT from New Zealand)
For a look at Arch in action which won't interrupt checking out those important YouTube vids for more than the time it takes to boot, try arch-live, aka archiso-live. See http://godane.wordpress.com/
It's a useful live CD with the odd quirk, such as desktops with menus set up for applications which are not included, but lxde (default), xfce, and gnome desktops selectable during boot work OK. KDE won't run on my machine with Intel integrated grfx, gets to a desktop but quits. An installer is included though not tested by me, but has worked for some from what I read. I have run this live for a week or more without problems. 88 • RE: 85 and others (by Daniele Bettella on 2009-01-21 08:37:51 GMT from Italy)
I've used Arch Linux for more than a year and I really like it. Fact is, the point of arch is to deliver you a sort of meta-distribution.. almost nothing is "default" except for an infrastructure that let you put together the different pieces as you see fit.. perhaps you could say it's a bit like LFS, but much easier. Regarding the rolling release and breaking packages: yes, that is far from perfect, a -Syu sooner or later will probably break something, although that doesn't happen that often and usually the solution is not that far away. 89 • FYI: Corsair Flash Voyager 8GB USB Pendrive not recognised by Linux (by Another bump on the road on 2009-01-21 13:22:54 GMT from Australia)
As I just bought 2 of them, it is a bit of a let-down. Tested with Ubuntu 8.10 and openSUSE 11.0 & 11.1. Works fine with Win XP-Sp3.
Did a Google search and my experience is confirmed by many bug reports.
The following bug report also has a suggested workaround for Ubuntu (it will probably work with other distros as well): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/261710 90 • to those who really want to learn (by Hitar Petar on 2009-01-21 16:16:58 GMT from United Kingdom)
There is some common misunderstanding here that people who want to learn the internals of the system use minimalist distros of the arch/gentoo/slackware... sort. If one wants to really learn some thing better get to the books, tutorials, exercises etc. on a stable system. I can tell you from experience that this is much faster approach to learn thing rather that infinitely hanging on the forums and chats. There are plenty of resources. Pick one of the big distros that have stable releases and don't waster your time with mindless struggling with broken packages or endless compiles. 91 • Yes, Arch is indeed very good (by rglk on 2009-01-21 19:41:48 GMT from Germany)
Thanks, Chris, for your careful and excellent review. In one respect, it may be somewhat misleading: it made it appear as though one has to go through a lot of steps in the install before one ends up with a fully functional graphical desktop environment. But I don't think that needs to be so.
I switched to Arch 2 1/2 years ago (32-bit i686 system), and at that time used their core system install method from an ISO burned to CD. From the terminal at runlevel 3, I then installed the XOrg and KDE meta packages, and in no time I had a functioning graphical desktop with a load of KDE applications. I then only had to tune a few config files, and I wound up with a finished system.
I never had to reinstall Arch from scratch, since I never managed to wreck it. I always used the rolling release style of doing full system upgrades (pacman -Syu) once every month or two and never ran into major difficulties with any of these upgrades. If there are problems, one never gets to the point of feeling really stuck and helpless. With the help of the terrific Arch community (lots of very smart people among them) that's available through the excellent Arch resources (wiki, forum and IRC) one always gets back to speed quickly. I almost feel embarassed about the rather small number of posts of mine in the Arch forum: I had few problems, few questions to ask, and as far as my helping others with their problems goes, usually members of the community more knowledgable than I already had come to their help before I could jump in.
So now I'm using this "simple", i.e. transparent and comparatively easy to understand, fast, responsive and trouble-free Linux distro for my everyday computing. It's a pleasure to use, and I marvel at the brilliance of the Arch developers who came up with this terrific distro and keep it working smoothly through all the changes the Linux kernel and userspace has gone through over the years. This is the ideal distro for me, and it has cured me, I believe once and for all, from an addiction to distro hopping that I had indulged in for 2 or 3 years previous to my settling on Arch. No need to try anything else now.
I would encourage people even with beginning to intermediate knowledge of Linux to give Arch a try. You'll tame it easily enough. Just read the Install Guide and the Beginner's Guide and make it a habit to poke around in the Wiki system and use the forum. Also, read and if needed act upon the messages pacman puts out when you do the periodic full system upgrades. Soon you'll have a fast, trouble-free system that's easy to maintain and largely lets you forget about Linux and just get on with doing all the stuff you want to use your computer for, without chronically being worried about its workings as you would be if you still were using that crappy OS from MS. 92 • Arch's likelihood of breakage due to its rolling release upgrade policy (by rglk on 2009-01-21 21:14:54 GMT from Germany)
With regard to the skepticism Chris Smart expressed over how well pacman would handle maintaining and upgrading thousands of packages over numerous cycles of rolling release upgrades as well as several commentators' concern over, in the words of one, "Arch's rolling release (which might spare me from having to perform a complete distro upgrade) would eventually become so full of upgrade cruft and breakage that reinstalling would probably be almost a necessity anyway":
I ran the command "cat /var/log/pacman.log | egrep 'installed|removed|upgrade' | wc -l" (see post #31) on my Arch install that's 2 1/2 years old (see post #97) and my count of packages installed, removed, or upgraded was 3935. And Arch is still running fast and without problems and so is pacman. 93 • @97,31 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-21 21:29:35 GMT from United States)
> cat /var/log/pacman.log | egrep 'installed|removed|upgrade' | wc -l 8229
And that's not counting the chroot. Everything works as well as on the first day, or better actually, because over time my configurations became more refined. 94 • Arch Linux (by Warper on 2009-01-22 00:00:17 GMT from Ecuador)
I certainly enjoyed reading the article about Arch. I consider myself a distro hopper also, but I found myself very comfortable for the last year or so using Arch. One of the things I like to insist on: The wiki is one of the best I've seen around and the forum is really helpful. Any problem you might have would probably had been discussed in the forums, and anything you want to install probably will already have a page on the wiki. Before the last snapshot you had to have the Beginners Guide somewhere else to read it as you installed Arch, but now it is loaded into the CD and this guide is really a step by step guide that makes installing this distro a breeze. I really recommend using it, but if you are not ready to search/read the wiki of search in the forum in case of something not working as you would like, please keep using the distro you are used to. Arch uses the console to configure it but everything is quite easy. I think there is a need for a new snapshot of the core because there is an error with klibc described in the news of june/08 that has to be manually solved to complete the first update. Besides that everything works smoothly. Warper 95 • We Need A New Review Of OpenBSD-4.4 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-22 04:50:24 GMT from United States)
Not only should D.W. have a new review of OpenBSD-.4.4 - they should also interview Theo de Raadt (I'm sure he would be glad to talk to D.W. about what's new in OpenBSD-4.4) and the new and up coming security features that are going to be in OpenBSD-4.5
Send Theo an e-mail and interview the guy.. Via E-mail or phone.
Just a thought..
P.S.
Linux isn't the only open-source distro on the market..
If possible: contact Robert Watson on security issues facing Linux/BSD and the net in general..I bet he would be more than glad to talk to D.W. 96 • Arch (by ony on 2009-01-22 14:00:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Nice review. I'm very impressed with Arch. Installed the Voodoo release & haven't reinstalled or tried anything else since. 97 • Has anyone tried Klik-it? (by MasterB on 2009-01-22 18:08:53 GMT from United States)
Anyone tried Klik-it yet? Seems to be a cool comunity distro.. can someone do a review? http://www.klikit-linux.com/ 98 • OpenBSD (by elimisteve at 2009-01-22 22:02:58 GMT from United States)
@95 Great idea! I second that -- I'd like to know more about the BSDs, what the OpenBSD developers do to keep it so secure, the status of wifi support, and what they could use the most help with. Thanks!
--Steve 99 • rolling release (by arno911 on 2009-01-23 10:47:23 GMT from Germany)
having not yet tried arch linux, (except for a quick test for 3 days in a vm) i can tell from another rolling release distro (sidux), that such a concept can work - i did not have a single breakage in sidux, and im using it since the project started. (unlike kubuntu: i was not able to upgrade it from one to another version without breakage, thats why i simply dont use it outside a virtual machine)
before doing a upgrade, read the warnings in the forum and what the package manager tells you, dont use it blindly, and you are fine. i bet the same applies to arch linux. and from what ive read here, it will probably be the system on my next computer.
b.r. arno911 100 • klikit linux post 97 (by Meck on 2009-01-23 16:52:42 GMT from United States)
Last release was April of last year.. old kernel, etc. :)
I'll wait for the new release, if there is going to be one.
Good things said about it in the forums I noticed. 101 • @91,93 (by Ara on 2009-01-23 18:36:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
It has occurred to me whilst upgrading my system that the command is slightly flawed as some install messages have the words installed/removed/upgrade... anyway :- # cat /var/log/pacman.log | awk ' { print $3 } ' | egrep 'installed|removed|upgraded' | wc -l 5755 # cat /var/log/pacman.log | egrep 'installed|removed|upgrade' | wc -l 6354 Bit of a difference. ;) 102 • @101 (by rar on 2009-01-23 21:43:08 GMT from United States)
# dog /woof/stick/ms.pacman.stick | shmock! ' { cursive } $.01 | braack! 'borked|exploded|downgraded | wcfields -l666 103 • PCLINUXOS 2010 (by 098 on 2009-01-24 00:26:28 GMT from United States)
Coming very soon!!! 104 • DW getting behind? (by AC on 2009-01-24 00:42:20 GMT from United States)
First, mad props to ladislav... Noticed he reads the comments and still has something to say. My question is is follows: Is it just a lull in activity or has ladislav's "absence" slowed the reporting on releases, etc? Just seems like there's either not a lot of news, or not a lot of reporting. Nice Arch review, btw. May have to give it a whirl after replacing a bad mobo on my test machine. 105 • RE: 104 DW getting behind? (by ladislav on 2009-01-24 00:47:26 GMT from Taiwan)
No, it's just that things have been a bit slow on the distro release front lately. But if I missed anything, feel free to email me and let me know :-) 106 • @105 (by AC on 2009-01-24 02:00:37 GMT from United States)
See! Mad props... =) 107 • Sabayon Linux 4 "LiteMCE" edition (by Anonymous Penguin on 2009-01-24 05:02:21 GMT from Italy)
It is always the same old story. Sabayon manages to impress me when it comes to beauty or features, but it fails eventually due to bugs. I was *very* impressed by this latest edition, but it failed to install due to an unknown bug. 108 • Ogg? (by Jenifer on 2009-01-24 12:02:13 GMT from Canada)
Is there a feed for the OGG episodes of the podcast? I can only find an MP3 feed. 109 • PCLINUXOS 2010 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-24 12:57:23 GMT from United States)
"Coming very soon" ?????
2009 is not even out yet!!! And it will very outdated even before it's released. 110 • RE: 108 Ogg? (by ladislav on 2009-01-24 13:50:13 GMT from Taiwan)
Yes, here you go: http://distrowatch.com/news/oggcast.xml 111 • @ 63 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-24 19:32:14 GMT from Canada)
"The thing that kept me away is Arch's goofy package manager and it's obtuse assortment of option flags."
Oh yea, that was killer. I can't believe I deciphered that without a walkthrough guide.
"Arch's rolling release (which might spare me from having to perform a complete distro upgrade) would eventually become so full of upgrade cruft and breakage that reinstalling would probably be almost a necessity anyway."
Been using it since 0.4 and it still works. Am I lucky, or do I possess some profound knowledge or skills that you do not?
I think a primary requirement for any Arch user is the ability to read instructions and act on them. If you want something that changes diapers for you, then you're probably not part of Arch's targeted user set. 112 • @82 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-24 19:38:16 GMT from Canada)
"I have installed Arch a couple of times and I think it is a great distro. But I simply do not get the point why I should use grandpa's techniques setting up the system."
I think you have a valid point. But in turn, I could ask you why they still teach calculus (or better yet, multiplication) in school. Computers can do that, so why do we need to?
I think the answer is that _learning_ how to do something and _understanding_ something are two very different things. If I use a more user-friendly distribution, there are often many "convenience" layers in place that save me from the "grandpa" route. If these abstraction layers break, I can still fix the system, because I understand how it works.
Of course, not everybody needs to know this kind of stuff. I think that's why Arch has always said it was targeting competent linux users. Some users should rightfully never have to know what's under the hood.
There are many ways to run a computer. I think the 450+ distributions on DW are a testament to that. :) 113 • linux? (by interesting on 2009-01-24 22:17:07 GMT from United States)
it seems that many here are using xp, vista and even windows 7 as they post their various rants about linux distros.
interesting indeed. 114 • Sabayon (by Todd R. on 2009-01-24 22:20:22 GMT from United States)
They are enjoying themselves apparently. Sabayon developers are having great fun making desktops look cool, etc.
Functionality is another story. I cannot get any Sabayon version to acquire and keep a network connection. Not to mention wrecked graphics, etc.
The latest won't install.. don't know why I keep trying that distro.. hope for a real functional beauty? Guess so... sigh. 115 • #113 linux? by interesting (by curious on 2009-01-25 00:17:42 GMT from Australia)
"it seems that many here are using xp, vista and even windows 7 as they post their various rants about linux distros.
interesting indeed."
Forgive my ignorance, but can you tell me how you know come by this?
Also, what OS am I using to post this?
Thanks 116 • re 115 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-25 00:49:53 GMT from Canada) Also, what OS am I using to post this?
That's a tricky question. You didn't use any OS. You used a browser to post that. :) 117 • @112 - Competent Linux users (by anon on 2009-01-25 01:01:37 GMT from Norway)
A Canadian anonymous wrote: "Of course, not everybody needs to know this kind of stuff. I think that's why Arch has always said it was targeting competent linux users. Some users should rightfully never have to know what's under the hood."
If I were a competent Linux user, I would be rather annoyed at having my logfiles filled up with stuff like this:
"Jan 21 05:56:29 Furuly load-modules.sh: 'dmi:bvnAwardSoftwareInternational,Inc.:bvrF9:bd12/05/2005:svn:pn:pvr:rvnGigabyteTechnologyCo.,Ltd.:rnGA-K8NXP-9:rvr:cvn:ct3:cvr:' is not a valid module or alias name"
and 27 more error msgs in the same vein, plus finding that with the Default kernel the system is no longer able to enable eth0 and obtain a DHCP lease for a vanilla Marvell ethernet card/driver.
The anonymous went on: "There are many ways to run a computer. I think the 450+ distributions on DW are a testament to that. :)"
Cavalier statements like the above only proves that there are even more ways to gloss over Linux distro problems.
The obvious main problem with Archlinux is the little testing being done even on critical software, and even for basic funtionality in critical OS components. It's my guess that a competent Linux user, perhaps especially a competent Linux user, will not put up with such nonsense for long. 118 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2009-01-25 03:44:15 GMT from United States)
"I think a primary requirement for any Arch user is the ability to read instructions and act on them."
Instructions are for knowing how something works, not how something breaks. Or did you mean repair manual? 119 • Sabayon 4 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-25 03:56:55 GMT from United States)
Okay I downloaded the latest Sabayon 4 distro a couple of days ago. I am running a turbo charged Ubuntu 8.10 thanks to the Ubuntu tweak tool and the Automatix like tool from Ultimate Edition (formerly UUE). I do a lot of multimedia and I use Codeweavers Crossover Office. I've been reading a lot of disappointing, but not all bad, reviews about Sabayon 4.
I'd like to hear from someone who installed it and have little or no issues with it. From past hopping around from distro to distro previously, I realized sometimes distros fail due to the type of hardware you have or the lack of it. So the term "User Results May Vary" may be applicable here.
So if Sabayon 4 is running smoothly for you tell us. I'm tempted to make the plunge but I fear I might also be disappointed that I got rid a good running distro if I do. 120 • Arch Linux (by Eugene Markow on 2009-01-25 12:04:39 GMT from Poland)
Excellent and fair review of Arch Linux. It's the most underated Linux distribution around. I've been Using Arch Linux for several months now and very happy with it...no issues and no problems. It runs fast, even on my old pc. Very easy to configure. I went from MS Windows XP > FreeBSD > Arch Linux. Reasons for switching are: MS Windows was too bloated, insecure, unstable, and too proprietary, FreeBSD doesn't have Flash or any good substitute available for it, and Arch Linux is always up to date with its 'rolling release' system, along with an a great selection of packages available in the 'Extra' and "Community" repositories. If you can't find the package you want in those, then AUR most likely has it. I admire that the Linux Kernel can be easily so compiled, customized, and integrated into Arch ( My guide: http://ejmarkow.byethost8.com/linux_kernel.html ). I intend to remain a LInux and Arch user for the foreseeable future. Great distribution! 121 • 103 • PCLINUXOS 2010 (by 098 on 2009-01-24 00:26:28 GMT from US (by nikkels on 2009-01-25 14:10:38 GMT from Thailand)
It will be 2009 first , don't you think so
About the "soon ". We expect , and I repeat expect , a full update to come out next week.
When the full release will be ready is still speculation.
And to : _____________ 109 • PCLINUXOS 2010 (by Anonymous on 2009-01-24 12:57:23 GMT from United States) And it will very outdated even before it's released. ___________
Please do your homework before you make a fool of yourself 122 • PCLOS2010 (by paul on 2009-01-25 15:05:31 GMT from United States)
That is good news -- I will be waiting. Until then Granular is a pretty good alternate.
As for PCLOS2009 being outdated before it is released, I understood the comment. But then, English is my first language. 123 • users vis a vis programmers (by jack on 2009-01-25 15:49:57 GMT from Canada)
It seems that a majority of the posters here are either programmers or are young enough to have taken some programming instruction at school. Others. like myself, are either old or retired. I have been a bookworm all my life and as a consequence pay little attention to punctuation or the lack thereof. Especially "white spaces". I have great difficulty in recognizing a white space. This makes using the cli a nerve wracking process. Ditto for any OS that employs a lot of cli. (Arch?) #118 notes the difference between an instruction manual and a repair manual. In practice it seems that the repair manuals (for linux) use a great deal of cli. Which is not surprising given the "power" of the cli. There have been fewer comments about Windows "bsod" lately (perhaps because FF and Ubuntu 8.04 had many "freezes") but the ability to just "ctrl, alt. del" to restart is very simple. There are other (linux) actions that will get one back to a working computer but all require more memory (human). The Windows "restore" function; if it works: would eliminate the need for a separate back up computer in order to get on line to get linux help. Perhaps the "instant on" that some MBs now have will allow one to access the internet even if you have borked the rest of the computer Obviously I stress "function" over "form" and linux over proprietary . 124 • re:129 (by truthbeknown on 2009-01-26 00:08:13 GMT from Australia)
I think as your scope widens in what you use your PC for, your chance of being able to use Linux exclusively diminishes. I know others will disagree, but, as soon as you put in Gaming, Linux is out the window(no pun intended) unless of course you wish to severely limit yourself, or put yourself at a huge disadvantage, Linux is absolute crap when it comes to gaming.
Graphical work, anything above the more basic graphical stuff, photo editing etc, sure, you can do the basic stuff in the like of the Gimp, but when you start getting up into more complex. professional type stuff, requiring the power of something like Photoshop CS4, well, the Gimp is a fine tool, but Photoshop it aint. (Last I knew Photoshop CS4 would not work acceptably, or at all with Linux). Then we could go on to areas where you would need something like 3dsmax (yeah, I know you can, or could get Maya for Linux, but . . .) and well, as fine as Blender is, it does have it's limits, and 3dsmax it aint. You could then go into all the proprietary file formats you need to use if you use these products seriously, which of course totally rules out the use of such things as Blender etc in a lot of cases.
Music production, yeah, yeah, Ardour Smardour, etc, etc, give me a break, in general Linux sound is a complete mess, don't think so, then might I suggest you plug your speakers in, oh, whats that, you can't get your sound to work, ok. There really is no comparison between what is available, and will run correctly, with 100% functionality under Windows, both in Hardware and Software, for Music production, to what Linux offers. I mean Linux can't even get vst's to work properly and with ease. What it can get to work is far from 100% functional. This is my area, I am a professional, and I can tell you, you will find very few studios, or other music professionals who use Linux based solutions, you will also be surprised at the ratio of Mac-Windows based operations.
One could go on and on, but anyway, my point is, if all you do is surf the net, Email, Office work, the usual basic stuff, you may be able to get away with Linux only(yeah, I know Linux can do more than this, but you know). But as soon as you start widening your scope, your going to start hitting walls, and you are either going to have to start compromising, or flat out giving things up that you enjoy, if you really desire to be 100% Linux.
Face it, it's a Windows world. 125 • re:1124 (by truthbeknown on 2009-01-26 00:15:58 GMT from Australia)
It seems that some posts have gone AWOL, so I guess my post 124 will be gone shortly as well, That's OK, but I wasn't bashing, just answering a question, with the truth as I see it. I like Linux, that's why I visit places like this, but I don't go promoting Linux at the expense of the truth, and no, Linux is not my main OS, does it have to be? 126 • RE: 124 (by ladislav on 2009-01-26 01:03:39 GMT from Taiwan) but, as soon as you put in Gaming, Linux is out the window(no pun intended) unless of course you wish to severely limit yourself, or put yourself at a huge disadvantage
So if one doesn't play computer games, he/she is "hugely disadvantaged"? How?
I don't know about others, but I haven't played a computer game since about 1998. Yet, I use a computer for 10 hours every day. There are many other ways a computer can be useful and I am pretty sure I am not the only one who doesn't care about computer gaming. 127 • RE: 125 (by ladislav on 2009-01-26 01:06:59 GMT from Taiwan) Linux is not my main OS, does it have to be?
No, but if you wish to discuss how Windows is better than Linux, then please find an appropriate forum for this topic. Here we discuss how one free operating system compares to another. 128 • re: 126/127 (by truthbeknown on 2009-01-26 01:45:53 GMT from Australia)
The computer games thing, that was just one example answering the question that was deleted, which was something like "How many people actually use Linux exclusively" I did state others, it is just showing that if you are into certain types of computing, Linux is out, pure and simple because it just can't cut it in those areas. And if you wanted to be 100% Linux, you WOULD have to give it up, or limit yourself, or be at a disadvantage. Not saying anything about people who DON'T game, being disadvantaged, but I'm sure you knew that.
If you, or thousands of others do not game, or have not gamed since 1998, well good for you, what about those that do, and there are many, many, many people who game, perhaps with your head buried in Linux you don't know this, or is it that those people don't matter, or is it that computer games are just for the kiddies, real men don't game.
Yes, I do realize that you can use Linux exclusively, but, as I said, if you start branching out in certain directions, you will hit walls, walls which Linux just can't climb.
I'm not really discussing how Windows is better than Linux as such, I was just answering a question, showing that there is reasons why certain, not all, people can not use Linux 100%, and if that is wrong, or a crime, then I apologize, delete my posts.
I sometimes get the feeling that Linux people, by their reactions, are actually insecure, that deep down they feel that their OS is inferior, the seeming need by Linux people to continually attack Windows, and not just the OS, but the users, calling them idiots, morons, and on and on. I mean, does the fact that you use a certain OS actually have an impact on what type of person you are, how intelligent you are, or your right to exist. The worst part about Linux has nothing to do with the OS itself, it is it's community, or more correctly, the attitudes of those within it's community, who might be labeled as zealots, or fanatics, what have you, they are the ones that do the most damage to Linux, they are the ones who drive people away. I find even between the different distro's, if you use ubuntu, the (just throwing names out here) Slackware, gentoo, Mandriva, you nam it people will label you as anything from a n00b to a moron, I mean you people can't even appear to be civil to each other within your own group, Linux, why?
I like Linux, I use Linux, I use Mandriva, Linux Mint, Debian, openSUSE, Linux is not my main OS, quite simply because it *can not* do all the things I require of an OS, it just can't.
Anyway, I'll leave you to it, it's your site, you make the rules, I respect that, I won't bother darkening your door again, and no, I wont let the door hit me on the way out, etc, etc, etc. 129 • Ref124,125,128 (by TruthIsUnknown on 2009-01-26 04:24:23 GMT from United States)
"...I sometimes get the feeling that Linux people, by their reactions, are actually insecure, that deep down they feel that their OS is inferior, the seeming need by Linux people to continually attack Windows..." Actually it may be YOU who is insecure. Why else would you feel the need to "enlighten" us all. I'm more interested in one who doesn't say either way what OS they use.
I do know of people that use Linux exclusively and others that use Windows or Mac exclusively. So what. I was with friends today at a computer swap meet. One friend ask about some trouble area with his XP system. I just tried to help him with his problem. I didn't end it with, "you really ought to use Linux". I worked with him on his level. He's aware of Linux. It's his choosing weather he wants to install and use it. Not for me to decide.
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